by Joan Wolf
“Tonight she is,” George replied. “Somehow I rather doubt that the college cuisine is going to be up to her standard, but I did emphasize our atmosphere of family coziness here at Yarborough.”
“I’ll bet she’s just going to love it,” Mary said dryly and George made a comic face.
* * * *
Margot Chandler did in fact accompany them to the dining room that evening. The meal was roast chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes, and peas. She looked at it with wide-eyed incredulity. “Darling,” she said reproachfully to George, “I can’t eat this. Think of the calories.”
“I’m sorry, Margot,” said George. “I suppose the food here is rather caloric. The kitchen staff is used to cooking for hungry youngsters, I’m afraid.”
“Perhaps I’ll just have a word with the chef,” Margot murmured gently and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. When she returned it was with a white-uniformed waiter who removed her plate. She reseated herself and smiled seraphically around the table.
Kit, who was already halfway through his dinner, said with amusement, “Are they fixing you something else?”
“Yes. The chef, such a dear man—he speaks only Spanish you know—quite understood my problem.” The chef apparently did, for shortly thereafter he appeared himself carrying a new plate that contained a grilled steak with a beautiful salad on the side. The Chandler eyes flashed in gratitude and Mary watched in some awe as the chef nearly fell over himself protesting to her that in the future he would be pleased—ecstatic actually—to cook for her whatever she might desire. Margot answered in lovely liquid Spanish and the chef departed with a majestic flourish. Dinner resumed.
“I’ve admired you for years, Miss Chandler,” said Eric Lindquist with a charming boyish smile. He had maneuvered successfully to be at the same table with The Star.
“Have you?” Margot looked speculatively for a minute at Eric’s handsome, suntanned face. She smiled. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Eric Lindquist,” he said. The admiration in his blue eyes was blatant. “I’m playing Fortinbras.”
“Oh, yes.” She took a dainty bite of her steak and turned to Kit. “I’m counting so much on you, Chris darling, to get me through this play. The thought of my own daring quite terrifies me.” She gazed up at him out of wide and helpless eyes. It was quite clear that Eric Lindquist held no interest for her and for the remainder of the meal she skillfully, charmingly, and mercilessly monopolized Kit’s attention.
Mary said little but watched thoughtfully as Margot went into action. When they all went into the rec room after dinner, she found herself alone with Margot for a minute as George and Kit went to get them coffee. Margot looked at Mary speculatively, taking her in from the top of her black head to the tips of her patent-leather pumps. “You’re married to Chris?” she asked bluntly.
Mary felt her temper rising. She did not like that look at all. “Yes,” she said shortly.
“But you don’t live together?”
“No.”
“I see.” Margot smiled at her charmingly. “You are a teacher here, I understand.”
“That is correct, Miss Chandler.”
The men returned and George handed Mary her cup. Margot smiled dazzlingly at the two males and said, “Isn’t it just marvelous, a woman intelligent enough to teach college. You must be very smart, Mary.”
Mary smiled back even more dazzlingly. “Yes,” she said, “I am.”
“She graduated summa cum laude,” said Kit, deadpan, and Mary shot him a look.
The Chandler nose wrinkled. “Summa cum . . . What does that mean?”
“It means that Mary is very smart indeed,” said George with a smile.
“Mary, George.” It was Melvin Shaw’s English accents. “How about some bridge?”
“Wonderful,” said Mary with alacrity. In Melvin she had tapped a deadly serious bridge player—he even had Master’s points, he had told them last night. She saw he had Nancy Sealy in tow. “George?” he asked again.
George cast a quick look at Margot and Kit. She looked smooth as cream; he looked a trifle grim and the dark eyes that looked back at George held a definite message. “Isn’t there someone else who could make a fourth?” George asked Melvin.
“No. No one who can play worth a damn.”
“Oh, well in that case ...” George allowed himself to be towed off, casting an apologetic glance back at Kit, who looked like thunder. Margot immediately put a hand on his arm and began to talk to him.
As Mary sat down at the card table she involuntarily glanced over to where her husband stood with Margot. They made a striking couple, her small, feminine fairness against his towering male darkness. But no matter how delicate and fragile she might appear on the surface, Mary was sure that underneath Margot was a cool, tough customer. She looked closer to thirty than forty, but her sophistication and assurance came from years of power, years of handling men to her own advantage. She seemed to be handling Kit very well. The scowl was gone and he was laughing. After a few minutes they left the room together.
“Mary” said Melvin in exasperation as she played a card. “That was my queen. You just trumped your own partner.”
“Oh dear,” said Mary, trying to recall her wandering wits. “Sorry, Mel. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Well, please do so,” he said severely.
“Yes, I’ll try.” And she stared resolutely at her hand.
* * * *
For the next two days Mary scarcely saw Kit, George, Alfred, or Margot. “Hell,” George had muttered to her as their paths crossed briefly on Friday, “she doesn’t even know her lines. And she needs her hand held constantly. I’m going to tear my hair out.”
The fact that Margot was proving a disrupting force among the cast was confirmed by Carolyn Nash, who sat down next to Mary at the lakefront on Saturday afternoon. “She’s a pain in the neck,” said Carolyn forthrightly in answer to Mary’s question as to how Margot was doing. “She hangs on Chris like a leech, and every time George moves her off center stage she cries.”
“Oh God,” said Mary. “What a mess. But is she any good, Carolyn?”
“I don’t know,” the girl grumbled. Then, unwillingly: “She may be all right. Chris has been coaching her about her voice. It’s a little thin and high,” She sighed. “He’s incredibly patient with her. I’d like to give her a good swift kick myself.”
“Yes, well you aren’t a man,” Mary murmured.
“That’s true. She’s very beautiful.”
“Very.”
They looked at each other and laughed ruefully. “I must say,” confessed Mary, “that I really didn’t believe women like that existed. I thought it was all part of the Hollywood myth. She actually calls people ‘darling.’ ”
“She lays it on so thick you can’t believe it,” said Carolyn in amazement. “I mean, I admire Chris enormously. I think he’s wonderful, actually. But she ...”
“I know. She makes Scarlett O’Hara look subtle.” They both laughed again and felt much better for having shared their mutual dislike of La Belle Chandler, as Mary called her nastily. They neither of them bothered to reflect that Margot’s chief sin in both their eyes was that since she had arrived, she had totally monopolized Christopher Douglas.
* * * *
Sunday morning Mary arose early and decided to go to Mass first and have breakfast afterwards. She put on her blue shirt-dress and espadrilles and got in the car. It was the first time she had ventured off campus since Wednesday when she had been accosted by Jason Razzia. She looked cautiously around as she drove out of the college gate but there was no one around. She made it to church without incident and on the way back to college stopped to pick up the Sunday papers. The store she stopped at was a small food market that had a lunch counter as well where they served coffee, donuts, and sandwiches. Sitting at the counter having a cup of coffee was her nemesis. Razzia jumped up the minute he saw her.
“Hi th
ere, Mrs. Douglas! You and Chris done any more boating? Or has Margot Chandler been keeping him too busy?” Mary ignored him and went to the cash register to pay for her papers and the few groceries she had picked up. “She’s between husbands right at present, you know, and may be in the market for a younger man. It seems to be the new fad.”
Mary gritted her teeth, collected her change, and stalked to the door. “You’re a good-looking dame,” came the revolting voice from behind her, “but Margot is supposed to be pure dynamite. Better watch out.”
Mary longed, with a passion that curled her fingers, to turn and smash him across his hateful face. She climbed into her car and relieved her feelings slightly by slamming the door hard and pretending that Jason’s Razzia’s fingers were in the way.
She got back to college, to safety, she thought as she drove in the gates and went to have breakfast in the dining room. She took her papers along, and over her second cup of coffee she opened the theater section of the Times. The headline jumped out at her:
CHRISTOPHER DOUGLAS TACKLES HAMLET.
She put down her coffee cup, folded the paper, and read:
During the past ten years some of the most interesting and daring of our theatrical ventures have come out of Yarborough College’s Summer Drama Festival. Last year George Clark, the festival’s talented and innovative director, sent on to Broadway a very smart and excruciatingly funny production of Sheridan’s eighteenth-century classic The School for Scandal. Two years before we had Louis Murray and Merrill Kane in a very fine and passionate Antigone, a play that was distinguished by Mr. Clark’s excellent use of the chorus. This year, with a piece of casting that takes one’s breath away, Mr. Clark is presenting Christopher Douglas in Hamlet.
Hamlet is perhaps Shakespeare’s most fascinating and demanding character. The actor who portrays Hamlet places himself in a position of inevitable comparison to the great actors of our century: John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, and Richard Burton to name a few. The challenge is daunting. Mr. Douglas first of all is an American, and no American actor in recent memory has risen to the challenge of Shakespeare in any way comparable to the British. Secondly, Mr. Douglas’s main experience has been in movies. He had stage experience as a student, and was in fact given his first screen test on the basis of a performance at New Haven’s Long Stage, but the fact remains that the greater part of his career has been spent in films.
It has been a phenomenally successful career, one hastens to add. There is not another screen actor performing today who can equal his popularity. His films invariably make back their initial investment in the first month of showing. But is that admittedly astonishing record enough to enable him to undertake so demanding a role as Hamlet?
One’s immediate reaction is to say no. No, the man who starred in Raid on Kailis, that glossy, adventurous blockbuster, is not the man who can play Hamlet. Which is not to say that Mr. Douglas was not very fine in his last film. He was. He has a screen presence that is possibly unsurpassed by any other actor in recent memory: a really beautiful face in the classic sense, a lean and splendid body and a voice that most actors would sell their souls for. Perhaps that is the problem, perhaps he has so much going for him that it is too easy for him to sit back and let the facade do all the work.
And yet... one remembers Ivan of The Russian Experiment. It was his first role and his best, and hinted at possibilities within him yet to be explored. In his recent films he has portrayed the popular modem hero: casual on the surface, tough and self-sufficient underneath. He has done it charmingly, effortlessly, and has managed at the same time to convey a sexual quality that is remarkable considering the restraint of most of his love scenes. But in Ivan we had something more: a depth and complexity hinted at, but palpable. The man who played Ivan may be able to do Hamlet.
Mr. Douglas apparently thinks himself that it is time he moved on from the world of popular movies into something more challenging. He could not, however, have picked a more formidable role. One applauds his courage. And awaits the outcome.
There was the sound of a chair being pulled out and Mary looked up to see Kit sitting down with a cup of coffee. “Have you seen the Times?” she asked immediately.
“No, I haven’t.” He sipped his coffee. “Good morning.”
She wrinkled her nose slightly. “Sorry. Good morning. And read this article.” She handed it over and picked up her own cup, her eyes on his face as he read. When he had finished he put it down and looked thoughtful.
“I don’t know what whim brought you to Yarborough, my friend, but you’ve put yourself behind the eight ball, haven’t you?” she said tensely.
“Have I?” he replied calmly.
“Yes. George said the first-night audience would be packed with critics waiting to see if you were going to fall on your face. Apparently he was right.” She tapped the paper with a long, nervous finger.
“Everything Calder said here is true, you know. I did coast through my last three movies. It was all I had to do, really.” His eyes were black and inscrutable as he watched her face.
“I know.” She looked at him very seriously. “Why did you take those parts. Kit? They surprised me. I thought, after The Russian Experiment, you would hold out for something more serious.”
“Can’t you guess?”
“No.”
He smiled crookedly. “Money, my dear. Filthy lucre. I wanted to put enough of it in the bank so that I’d never have to worry about it again. And I’ve done that. I had ten percent of Raid On Kailis, you know.” He pushed his coffee cup away. “I’m not ashamed of those films. They were well done, they were fun, they were exciting without being violent. They weren’t terribly serious, I’ll agree, but they served a purpose. They entertained millions.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I know that.” She gave him a worried look. “But you are going to have to come up with a helluva Hamlet to beat the image you’ve made for yourself. The critics won’t incline toward leniency.”
“Are you concerned about me, Mary?” he asked softly.
“Yes. I am. The rehearsal time is too short. You’re working with students. And Margot.” Her voice altered imperceptibly as she said that last name and he grinned.
“She’s going to be all right. All George has to do is put her at center stage and she’s happy.”
“How about you?”
He looked sardonic. “I don’t need the center of the stage.”
Her throat was suddenly dry. “Kit”—unconsciously she leaned toward him—”can you do it?”
“I think so. If I want to.” His voice was soft and very deep. “Is it important to you that I succeed?”
“Yes.” Her voice in return was barely a whisper. “Yes, it is.”
“Mind if I join you?” said George’s cheerful voice.
“Of course not,” returned Mary after a minute, forcing a smile.
Kit turned his splendid raven head toward George and favored him with a cold stare. “You’re up late,” he said disapprovingly.
“It’s Sunday,” replied George mildly, tucking into his plate of scrambled eggs. “My day of rest.”
“Why don’t you go over and hold Margot’s hand for a while?” asked Kit disagreeably.
“It’s not my hand she wants to hold.” George refused to be ruffled by his star’s evident bad temper. Kit gave up trying to intimidate him and turned to Mary.
“How about a game of tennis?” he asked.
“Tennis?” She looked at him incredulously. “You never played tennis before. You said it was a sissy game.”
He grinned a little. “I was being defensive. I didn’t want you to teach me to play because I knew you’d beat me.”
She gave him a long blue stare. “And now you think I can’t?”
“I don’t know,” he returned frankly, “but at least it’ll be a contest.”
“I’ll meet you at the courts in half an hour,” she said.
“Fine.” He smiled pleasantly at George. “See you late
r,” he said and strolled casually out of the dining room. Everyone present, including George and Mary, watched him go.
* * * *
Half an hour later, dressed in a white tennis dress and carrying her racquet and a Thermos, Mary arrived at the tennis courts. There were four of them, each with a concrete rubberized surface and all four were presently in use. Mary went to sit next to Kit on the bench and looked at him appraisingly. He was wearing white shorts and a light blue shirt.
“How good are you?” she asked speculatively.
He glanced sideways down at her, his lowered lashes looking absurdly long against the hard male line of his cheek. “You’ll find out.”
“We’re through now,” said Nancy Sealy as she came over to the bench with the girl she had been playing. “You can have our court, Mary.”
“Thanks.” Mary flashed the girl a smile and bent her head to unzip her racquet cover. That look of Kit’s had disturbed her, and as she took the court she tried to ignore the suddenly accelerated beat of her heart.
They warmed up for five minutes, then Kit said, “Shall we start? You can serve first.”
“Okay.” She put one ball in the pocket of her dress, picked up another, and went to stand at the service line. Mary had been playing tennis since she was eight years old. Her parents belonged to a golf and tennis club and she had always spent hours every summer on the courts. She wasn’t a powerful player, but she was extremely steady and accurate. She tossed the ball high in the air and served. Kit returned it deep to the baseline with a hard forehand shot. Mary, who had moved in, missed it. She stood for a minute looking at him in surprise, then went to serve again. This time she put it on his backhand side and his return, while deep, was not as hard. She sent it back with her own smooth, classic forehand and eventually took the point.
She eventually took the game as well, but it took three deuces before she was able to put it away. Then Kit moved to the service line.
The ball boomed across the net and was by her before she had finished getting her racquet back. “Good grief,” she said. “What was that?”